


Under the cherry blossom tree

by dragonascent



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Graphic Description of Corpses, Just mentions of it though, Underage Rape/Non-con, graphic description of suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 11:27:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29916204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonascent/pseuds/dragonascent
Summary: A mysterious woman standing underneath a cherry blossom tree. A secretive village that refuses to talk about what is happening in the nearby forest. What is going on?
Comments: 6
Kudos: 6
Collections: The Witcher Flash Fiction Challenge #017





	Under the cherry blossom tree

1.  
Someone was standing underneath the cherry blossom tree. A woman, in a red and white dress, her waist-length raven locks untied at her back, facing away from him. She was unnaturally still, and he could not smell her scent. Only the intense sweetness of flowers in the tree fills the air. Weird. Neither could he hear her heartbeat. He tries to get closer, almost uncontrollably, not evaluating the oddness of the situation. Very unlike him. However, no matter how long he kept walking, she still remains out of his reach. Only the sweetness of flowers filled the air.

  
2.  
He managed to break free of the pull eventually and heads towards the nearest town. He could hear their bustling market from a mile away. He tries the tavern first, asking the innkeeper if there were anything strange happening in the surrounding forests. The man, who was previously joyously exclaiming that he had finally found a worthy Gwent opponent, stills at his question and looks away. Suddenly all his enthusiasm gone. He answers the question all the same, “No, witcher. Nothing ever happens in this town.” His heart beats like a liar’s.

  
3.  
The witcher, Geralt, tried to gather information from the other villagers next. But no one would even speak to him. Seems like word had spread. No worries, though, He could still eavesdrop. He could hear their conversations from across a room, across a wall, across the street. He could just sit there, and no one would know.

  
4.  
A children’s song gains Geralt’s interest. It’s something he hasn’t ever heard of anywhere outside this village. The contents seemed mundane at first, but mothers all over the village had started to scold their children when they sang it. A very recent development that had developed right after Geralt spoke to the innkeeper on his first day in the village.

  
5.  
“The first time he went he came back dreamy, the second time he went he came back shocked. But the third time he went he didn’t come back at all!”

  
6.  
Geralt decides to investigate the forest where the cherry blossom tree was again. He was getting no luck at the village. Although they were definitely hiding something.

  
7.  
The sweet scent is calling to him again, but this time, he was prepared. He could sense the volatile magic in the air now. A curse, it must be. Besides, it’s spring, not really the time of year when cherry blossoms bloom. He begins to notice more oddities that he had not noticed his first time here. The foliage was thick and lush, unusual for a place so close to human settlement. He could also see where dirt roads used to exist, now reclaimed by the forest from lack of use.

8.  
He meets her again. This time her side faces him. He sees that she was still wearing the same red and white dress from before, but this time soaked in blood. A noose was hanging from the cherry blossom tree. Geralt watched in shock, unable to move, as the woman climbed onto a stool she had placed on the ground. She took the noose in her hands and placed her head in it. Then she kicked the stool from underneath her feet. Geralt hears the crush of the bones in her neck snapping in half. A gust of wind blows in his direction, the metallic scent of blood mixed with the sticky-sweet perfume of the flowers engulfs him. Geralt almost threw up there and then.

9.  
“Stop bothering me, there are no monsters in the forest. No curses either! We’re decent folk. Take your coin and your freakiness and get away from my town!!” The alderman screamed at Geralt, face red with anger, holding his broom in front of him as if a simple wooden stick could protect him from a witcher. Cold sweat soaks the alderman’s shirt. He is nervous, Geralt could tell. Perhaps from trying to fend off a professional monster slayer who just brought him a fiend’s head with a hollow stick. Or perhaps it was because he was trying to lie to the same monster slayer while trying to fend him off with the stick. Lambert would have found the situation hilarious, Geralt thought to himself.

10.  
When Geralt left the alderman’s house, it was already dusk. It was usual for the villagers in rural areas such as this one to return to their homes before sundown. Thus, the owner of the heartbeat squatting on the other side of the fence outside of the alderman’s house stood out to Geralt like a sore thumb. Someone was waiting for him.

11.  
The owner of the heartbeat was an elderly man. His skin was wrinkled and dry like crumbled paper and his hair and eyebrows white as snow. Geralt had seen him around the village, often staring intensely at him. Geralt had assumed that it was glaring from seeing an unwelcomed mutant in the village. Seems like he was wrong.

12.  
The old man introduced himself as Stefan and then proceeded to grab on to Geralt’s shirt sleeves, begging Geralt to come with him to somewhere that will offer them more privacy. “I will tell you everything, master witcher!”

13.  
Once at Stefan’s house, he offers Geralt a helping of ham and bread with some juice. Then he began his tale.

14.  
“When I was a young lad, there used to be a couple living in the forest. The wife weaved fabrics for the husband to sell at the market. But, the husband was a gambler and a drunk. It must have been too much for her to handle. Because she snapped and killed her husband and then hang herself. The forest had been killing our lads ever since!” Tears welled up in Stefan’s aged eyes. “She took my son, my dear Antoni… This has to stop.” Looking as if he had made a hard decision, Stefan held up a large coin pouch with shaking hands. “This is my life’s savings. It will be yours if you help me get rid of the horrid woman ghost!”

15.  
“Just one question though”, Geralt asks. “Why wouldn’t the alderman, or anyone in this village, talk about it around me?” Stefan’s face began to crumble with anger, his nostrils flare, and his cheeks turn red. “That’s because they just want the goods travelers leave behind when they die!” he exclaimed. “The blasted ghost only kills men, so the womenfolk can loot the bodies after travelers die in the forest. It’s only been 30 years since any lad from our village had been killed and they already forgot. Well, I hadn’t!”

16.  
A wraith. Geralt had guessed as much.

17.  
All wraiths have an anchor to the living world, something holding them down. Be it a precious item they held dear, thoughts of a previous lover who betrayed them, or the tree they hang themselves on. Geralt knew what he had to do. He had to destroy the tree.

18.  
It was with a clear head that Geralt made his way to the cherry blossom tree again. Noonwraith decoction holding back hypnotizing effects of the tree that lured so many travelers to their death. The tree smelled sickeningly sweet, accompanied by the revolting metallic taste of blood, a lot of blood, flourishing and blooming despite the season. For the first time, Geralt was able to make steady progress approaching it. He drew his Spector oil coated silver sword, ready for the wraith to appear at a second’s notice, as their species often do. For the first time, Geralt finally had the displeasure to let his eyes fall upon the ground where the tree settled. At its roots mountains of corpses lay, soaked in blood. Kneeling down beside a fresh-looking corpse, Geralt could see that his wounds consisted of large jagged slashes. The killing blow would have been the large slash across the man’s neck, the artery there severed in half. The roots of the tree were a deep reddish-brown color, fat from drinking the lifeblood of unfortunate men.

19.  
Suddenly a wave of uneasiness swept over Geralt, and when he turned around, holding his silver blade in a defensive position, he realized that he was no longer in the forest, but in a small wooden hut instead. Standing in front of him, was the woman that he had seen appearing with the tree.

20.  
The woman looked to be around 30 years of age, and she had been crying. In her right hand, she held tightly onto a pair of fabric scissors. Despite her small size, and weak physique, Geralt held both his guard and his sword up. This was one of her illusions, he knew. The woman was trembling, her face red and her eyes bulging, if she was alive, Geralt would have expected to hear labored breath and a pounding heart as well. She was furious.

21.  
“How dare you,” the woman accused Geralt. “You lying cheat and scoundrel!” Geralt was unsure of how he had ever offended the woman to deserve being accused in such a way. “My baby sister, she is only fourteen! And how she is with child… How could you!” Ah, Geralt thought to himself, a recreation of a memory that the wraith experienced when she was still alive. “I am going to kill you.”

22.  
The wraith pounced at Geralt faster than any normal human woman of her size and physique could possibly have, holding her scissors above her head in a stabbing motion. Geralt rolled to dodge her blow and to create some distance between the enraged woman (wraith) and himself. Turning his body to face the woman, Geralt quickly signed yrden on the wooden floor at his feet. As the woman made her way towards him again, Geralt positioned himself so the trap was in her path. As she stepped into the ring of purple energy on the floor, her face looked shocked as she discovered that she could no longer move. She screamed a scream that can only be described as inhuman, skin and flesh started to fall off of her body, and the bones of her limbs elongated and the tips of her fingers formed sharp claws that would be very efficient in slashing open arteries. The clean red dress that she was wearing fell away to reveal bloody rags that clang onto the wraith’s body. After the illusion fell away, the only part of the wraith that still resembled the poor woman was her long black hair.

23.  
It was then that Geralt realized that he was back among the dead bodies of unfortunate travelers, the illusion had completely fallen away.

24.  
The wraith lifts her claw and reddish-brown roots and vines emerge from the blood-soaked ground with their sharp ends piercing at Geralt like arrows. A gush of igni successfully knocks the twines off course and Geralt takes the chance to close the distance between himself and the trapped wraith, turning his body to slash at her with his well-oiled sword. Feeling the attack connecting, Geralt rolls away again, to get ready for another strike. As Geralt rose to his feet to assess the damage he has dealt to the wraith, the strangest thing happened. The wound that Geralt had dealt to the wraith maliciously mended itself, like burning paper in reverse, the gaping hole across her chest knotted itself together until no wound could be seen any longer and the wraith was good as new. Well, brute force certainly wasn’t going to work with this one.

25.  
Geralt felt a pull from his yrden that he had cast on the floor. It was not going to hold any longer. He had to think fast or run for it. He very much doubted that running would do him any good though, the noonwraith decoction that he had consumed before entering the forest wouldn’t last very long.

26.  
The cherry blossom tree. He had to destroy the cherry blossom tree. Without the tree to anchor the wraith in the living world, she would be forced to move on.

27.  
Yrden shatters like crystals made of light and the wraith was free to roam again. With a new plan of attack, Geralt casts a quick quen over himself and throws the dragon’s dream bomb that he had prepared at the cherry blossom tree. He follows it with a dancing star right after.

28.  
The firey explosion knocks Geralt into the air flying with the full force of an earth elemental’s punch right to the gut and shatters his quen like it was nothing. Geralt tried to right himself before his landing but the disorientation from being knocked over prevented him from doing that. Luckily for him, the soft decaying flesh of the bodies littered across the ground cushioned his fall.

29.  
When Geralt managed to force his body to sit up and his vision to clear, he saw that the wraith was burning, just as the tree was, despite it being impossible for wraiths to burn, being immaterial and all. She cried her high-pitched inhuman cry and circled the same spot on the ground, oddly resembling a human when being set on fire. Her tattered dress was fully consumed by the flames, as was her once long silky hair. Her bones were darkened and pieces of dust had begun to fall off of it. And she kept screaming her blood-curling scream.

30.  
Geralt must have passed out for a while, as he noticed that the cherry blossom tree had been fully engulfed by the raging flames, and all the flowers were gone, only leaving dark baren branches left.

31.  
Turning to the wraith again, her screams had finally subsided, and it was obvious to see why. As the flames that were consuming her died down, she was turning into dust. Her jaw fell off her body first, then followed by her arms, shoulders, parts of her spine, until all that’s left was a dusty pile of bones on the floor.

32.  
The cherry blossom tree took three whole hours to burn. In the meantime, Geralt checked for valuables on the dead bodies on the ground. It was obvious that they had already been looted. All their valuables were gone. Geralt was able to find one of two letters that they had on their person when they had died, but otherwise nothing. There was a great mix of different people who these rotting corpses once were. Some were knights, still wearing armors that did them no good fighting against a spector, others were merchants and scholars, wondering into the lair of the wraith through sheer bad luck. Geralt cast a stream of igni over all of them, the tree was the only thing that kept necrophages away from their feast before, with it gone, there will be nothing stopping them from coming to this all-you-can-eat buffet.

33.  
Upon returning to Stefan’s house under the cover of night, he was generously fed and watered once again, and given the promised heavy stack of coin. The elderly man offered to lend Geralt a room for the night, but he refused. Perhaps it is better if no one found out that the old man living at the edge of the village had hired a witcher to get rid of a profitable source of income for the village. As Geralt finally rode away from the small village on roach in the early mornings. His faith (or the lack of it) was the same as it was last month. He sincerely hoped that no one would find out what Stefan had done, but the old man was clever, he would probably be fine.

34.  
At least Geralt had money to buy roach new tack now, the old ones were falling apart at the seams. So, for now, at least, Geralt was happy.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for making it to the end. I have more to say as usual but I don't want to give myself away. I hope you enjoyed this fic.


End file.
